Bitcoin ripped higher by 14% on Thursday, rising near the $8,000 level before pulling back to the $7,600 level.

Mainstream outlets are pointing to the end of tax season – during which time some crypto holders had to sell their crypto in order to pay capital gains taxes to the IRS – as a possible catalyst, and that may be part of it.

But there are many reasons why this market will take off again. Let’s look at a few of the key improving fundamentals and see why I think they can take this market to new all-time highs this year.

No. 1: Bittrex Reopening to New Customers

Around four months ago, Bittrex, one of the largest altcoin exchanges, was so flooded with new customers that it had to shut down new account registrations. At one point, it had 500,000 users trading concurrently, which is simply massive.

The company has been busy upgrading its infrastructure to handle all the demand, and this week, it finally started accepting new customers.

This is a huge deal because Bittrex is one of the primary on-ramps to the altcoin market. It lists well over 100 coins, and around $430 million has been traded on the platform over the last 24 hours.

There are a few other major exchanges still not accepting new customers. Others, like Coinbase, are frantically scaling up their customer support and overall teams.

The crypto industry is scaling up massively, often with support from top venture capitalists. It takes time to build systems capable of handling tens of millions of users, but it’s happening across the world.

Once all the major exchanges are open again to new users, the altcoin market should have an absolute field day.

Also, both Bittrex and Binance are planning to accept fiat money (dollars, euros, etc.) in the near future. This would be huge because money would be able to enter the altcoin market directly. (Currently, most users buy bitcoin first then send it to an altcoin exchange where it can be used to trade.)